The Hindu : International : GM rice to combat blindness

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 30, 2005

International

International

GM rice to combat blindness

By Ian Sample

LONDON, MARCH 29. British scientists have developed a genetically modified strain of rice they believe could combat childhood blindness and prevent deaths due to vitamin A deficiency.

The plant is an improved version of ``golden rice'', a GM crop released five years ago that is enriched in beta-carotene, which the body converts into vitamin A.

The release of golden rice met with widespread criticism from anti-GM groups, which claimed it did not contain enough beta-carotene to have any beneficial effect.

The new strain, golden rice 2, contains more than 20 times the amount of beta-carotene in its predecessor, or enough to provide 100 per cent of the recommended dietary allowance of vitamin A from just 70g of rice, according to its developers.

The World Health Organisation estimates that vitamin A deficiency causes 500,000 cases of child blindness a year, and kills some 6,000 people across south-east Asia.

Rachel Drake, a scientist with the British arm of the biotech company Syngenta, developed the crop with colleagues by splicing a gene from maize into the rice plant. The study appears in Nature Biotechnology.

While Syngenta will retain the rights to commercialise the crop, seeds will be donated free to the Humanitarian Project for Golden Rice, which hopes to begin trials of the crop in India and the Phillipines later this year.

Greenpeace claimed the new crop would still do nothing to help alleviate malnutrition. Christoph then, its genetic engineering spokesman, said other foods rich in beta-carotene, such as carrots and leafy green vegetables, were preferable because they encouraged a more varied diet. —

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